


Madness

by aeriie



Category: Heartless - Marissa Meyer
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-12
Updated: 2019-04-12
Packaged: 2020-01-12 05:43:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18440231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aeriie/pseuds/aeriie
Summary: I am Georgiana Grimsley, the White Kings Bishop. I am his right hand. His knife in the dark. I will decide my own Fate. OCxHatta ish





	Madness

**Author's Note:**

> Note: I pronounce ‘Georgiana’ as 'Jor-jay-nuh’ and 'Ana’ as “anna’.  
> I started this fic a couple of years ago, so forgive me if my knowledge of the book/world is a little rusty. This is my take of a kind of sequel.

Ana dressed quickly – a cream tunic and brown leather boots, laced up over the knees of the military style pants she wore.  
  
Pants. Not quite appropriate attire for a Lady of the Court, let alone a Bishop, but Ana had lived too long to care about others opinions.  _Far too long._  
  
The White King had summoned her. A messenger having departed only minutes ago, after delivering the message for her to meet His Majesty in his private quarters.  
  
If she had three chances to guess what this meeting would entail, she would have guessed it in only one.   
  
There had been no word from the Rooks, and their time was up. The Red Queen was advancing across The Board. If the White Queen didn’t act soon, their Queendom would be lost to her will.   
  
The Rooks were sent to retrieve a heart. The heart of a Queen, to be precise. A tool to shift the tide of this war in their favor, and end the battle once and for all. The country of Hearts is at peace, Chess needs it more than they do.   
  
Ana moved to the large looking glass on the wall, pulling her dark hair back into a braid, and recited her daily affirmation.   
  
_I am Georgiana Grimsley, the White Kings Bishop. I am his right hand. His knife in the dark. I will decide my own Fate._  
  
She looked at her reflection from beneath dark lashes, and knew that although she may look like a Lady, she was far from it. It made no sense to send the Queens Bishop on an errand such as this. The Sheep, as they affectionately called her, was well past her prime.   
  
_She advises, I act. That is how it’s always been._  
  
Those in the King’s employ were ruthless. Soldiers and assassins. A stark contrast to the Queens own circle, full of wisdom and knowledge that she would rarely bother to heed.  
  
When the last Bishop, the Aged Man, finally succumbed to Time, Ana was promoted. No longer was she a Knight, doomed to fight the endless, bloody war in the fields of Chess, but a full-fledged member of the Court, and deserved of the respect the title held.   
  
A mechanical pistol hung at her side, it’s bronzed barrel polished and gleaming in the late morning light. Two silver daggers were strapped to each ankle, hidden from sight. Most Knights grew out of their old habits when they moved up the ranks, leaving the carnage of the Board behind them. Blood and death stained them all like a bad memory.  
  
But not Ana.   
  
She would rather gouge out her own eyeballs before forgetting the poor and hopeless soldiers, fighting a never-ending war for their Queens.  
  
The Red Queen had put her husband to sleep, it is said. A powerful enchantment. They say she had never forgiven him for suggesting the war was pointless. She wanted Chess, all for herself. And she was going to do most anything to get it.   
  
The White Queen was weak. Absent minded. It was treason to say so, but they all knew it. She had power, but not the strength to wield it. They say she has the gift of foresight, though she’s never been able to keep her mind for quite long enough to deliver more then a few nonsense words. The last Ana heard were-  
  
_Martyr. Monarch. Murderer. Mad._  
  
That was before Jest and Raven had left for Hearts. Months had passed since then. It almost felt like a lifetime.   
  
Ana took one last look in the mirror, smoothing down any stray wrinkles in her trousers. Emerald eyes swept over her attire in approval one more time before she departed for the throne room.  
  
The long corridors of the palace shone in the morning light - white marble and silver awnings perfectly polished. Ana took little delight in the grandeur, preferring instead to let her thoughts sweep her away for a precious few moments.   
  
The White King had military strengths, but what he did not have was the authority to give orders on the Board. Those decisions lay with his wife. Young, afraid, indecisive.   
  
She could not hope to win this war. Not without help.   
  
Ana entered  the Kings private quarters with all the confidence her title afforded, sweeping a low bow in front of the man who had summoned her. He sat in a high-backed armchair, spine straight and shoulders rigid, every inch the former soldier and commander he was in his prime.  
  
In his rooms he often forwent the white, powdered wig his wife insisted he wear in public, and his raven-black hair seemed almost severe in contrast to his usual prim appearance.   
  
"The Queen has had a premonition,” He began, never a man to waste precious Time on flirting or frivolities.   
  
“What was it?” Ana asked, sparing even littler Time for titles. In these private rooms, they were not King and adviser, but mere warriors preparing for the battle ahead.   
  
“Hopeless. Helpless. Headless _. Heartless,_ “ The King recited, and Ana paced the room slowly, the words repeated on the tip of her tongue.   
  
Four words. Just like the last time.  _But what did they mean?_  
  
"My messengers have not returned for quite some time,” The King continued, his sharp eyes seeking all the questions Ana had not yet asked. 

  
“There are rumors of strange happenings at the Crossroads.”  
  
Ana stopped hearing, stopped pacing, stopped breathing. Perhaps Hatta hadn’t returned to Chess, not because he didn’t want to, but because he  _couldn’t._    
  
A tightness wound it’s way through her chest, as cold and steel and stone. It was hard seeing him return to Chess, knowing what could never be. Knowing he would never stay.   
  
It was even harder to watch him leave.  
  
Time works in strange ways in Chess. The inhabitants aged both backwards and forwards. Just this month they had thought June was fast approaching, bringing with it the sweltering first days of Summer. And then Time reversed it all, plunging them deeper back into the chill of Fall, where Ana was forced to celebrate yet more unbirthdays. By now she had had so many, she barely remembered her true Birthday at all.   
  
Today Ana looked twenty, but her heart was much older. Time could mould and shape every other part of her, aging and un-aging everything from the freckles on her nose right down to the tips of her toes. But not her heart.  
  
For it was locked up tight, in a place where Time nor Fate could ever reach it.  
  
She had been floating between seventeen and thirty-four for the last sixty years. Perhaps one day Time would make up his mind, let her grow old, and with a certain Pawn returned to Chess…   
  
_No, that would never happen_. Time would always be unpredictable and the Pawn would always,  _always_  be coming and going, one step ahead of his own demise.   
  
That was how the two of them lived – the Pawn and the Bishop.   
  
_They were both running._  
  
He from Time, and she from Fate.   
  
It was a sad existence, but for Queen and country, a necessity. And Ana had seen the Sisters’ drawings enough times to know that she wouldn’t –  _she couldn’t_ – let them become her reality.  
  
“You will go to Hearts, Lady Bishop,” The King was saying, breaking her from the clutches of her own mind. “Retrieve the Rooks, and the Pawns… and the heart.”  
  
“Yes, Your Majesty,” Ana swept a bow, leaving the room without another word.  
  
For a moment she wondered if Time was too busy collecting his debts to notice the way her boots clicked over the marble so swiftly, or that she called for her horse to be readied immediately. Time was one of many things she refused to waste, though she often wondered if He himself ever had the time to notice. There was only one thing that she knew for sure.   
  
It was time to take a trip through the maze. 


End file.
